Still on Senator Enang’s lie with statistics

The power of propaganda, as an aphorism goes, lies less in its systematic and deceptive distortion of the truth than in the willingness of people, generally speaking, to be lied to. This willingness to be deceived is possibly the only, certainly the best, explanation of how many otherwise knowledgeable individuals, institutions and pundits in the country swallowed Senator Solomon Ita Enang’s recent mendacity on the sacred floor of the Senate that Northerners controlled 83% of the country’s oil wells, hook, line and sinker.

Predictably, my column to that effect last week drew a lot of flack. Of the 47 texts and the odd email or two I received in reaction, the vast majority supported the senator. Several, including one from +2348183916532, warned me not to “insult our senator for revealing the truth to Nigerians.”

Another from a reader, who simply called himself Godfrey (+2348076823815), quoting Thomas Carlyle’s words about every man having a coward and a hero in his soul, described the senator as “a man who has a hero in his soul.” He then proceeded to give me some words of advice on how one should “learn how to accept the truth, no matter how bitter.”

Another reader, Ubong Joseph, texting from +2348023262979, was less charitable. “Mr. Mohammed Haruna,” he said, “l’ve just finished reading your piece on Senator lta Enang’s submission on ownership of 83% of Nigerian oil blocks by your brothers and your comments is yet an indication that as a typical Northerner the “Food is Ready” and “Share the Money” syndrome of the North must be maintain(ed) indefinitely by your Northern Cabal. For actions and comments like this, may the soul of Lord Lugard never, never Rest in Peace for that forceful Amalgamation in l9l4.”

Elsewhere much of the reactions to the senator’s claim have been no less supportive than those of the three above. One of the most interesting, I believe, came from “General” Ateke Tom – yes, he of the war-lord fame from the Niger Delta. The reader, I am sure, can readily recall that only last August, the respected New York Wall Street Journal, published a damning article which exposed how he, along with four other former war-lords, received the princely sum of $40 million a year from the Presidency, ostensibly to stop oil theft in the region. Ateke Tom’s share of the fees, the newspaper said, was $3.8 million.

The scandal, obviously, was not just that the payments were under the table. Worse, no services were ever delivered in return; oil experts have said there have been more oil thefts in recent years than at any time before these payments of what was clearly protection money to the ex war-lords.

In a full page advert in Thisday of March 11, “General” Tom, writing as “Leader” of IZON IKEMI which he described as “a nascent group of concerned Nigerians drawn from the Ijaw speaking states of the Niger Delta,” praised Senator Enang for his “patriotism” in exposing the way the villainous Northerners have cornered the oil wealth that did not belong to them.

IZON IKEMI, he said, “heartily commends the patriotism of Senator Ita Enang… for exposing the deceit in the oil sector of our nation.”

Senator Enang may be a hero and a patriot for many in making his claim, but anyone who really cared for the truth would never have needed more than to merely scratch the surface to see that his claim was anything but the truth.

The simplest way to get the most authentic facts is to get the oil authorities, specifically the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), to publish the list of all the oil wells we have in this country and their ownership. If I want to prove the senator wrong, one reader said quite sensibly, I should get my facts and publish it.

Well, I tried ahead of today’s column and made little headway; Dr Omar Farouk, a spokesman of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) said his department didn’t have the figures and directed me to the DPR. I called the director, Mr Osten Olorunsola, several times on the 14th of this month and got no response. I then sent him a text identifying myself and requesting for the list. I was yet to hear from him as at the time of this writing. And I wasn’t really surprised; a mutual friend, who is an expert in the oil business, had asked for the same information and was refused.

However, even without DPR publishing the list there has been sufficient information in the public domain for any sensible person to see through our senator’s mendacity. For example, back in 2007, Mr. Basil Ominyi, then Chief Executive Officer of Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria, by far the country’s biggest oil producer, told Corporate Nigeria, an annual guide for business, trade and investment in the country partly sponsored by NNPC, that his company produced over 40% of Nigeria’s oil and supplied 75% of its commercial gas. He also claimed that the company’s mining area of 31,000 square kilometres “contained more than half of Nigeria’s oil and gas reserves.”

In the same interview, he pointed out that NNPC’s joint venture with his company, along with similar ventures with ExxonMobil,ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips – all three from the U.S. – Eni from Italy and Total SA from France, accounted for nearly 95% of Nigeria’s oil production. The ownership structure of all six joint ventures is between 55 and 60% in favour of NNPC. In terms of management control, Northern presence in all six is virtually nil, or at best marginal.

Commonsense – which, alas, seems so uncommon in our essentially malicious politics – should instruct us that the dominance of our oil industry by the giant oil multinationals has left less than 10% for ownership by our local oil companies. Anyone who imagines that Northerners controlled 83% of this leftover from the Big Boys need only refer to the list of the indigenous oil companies and their owners which Olusegun Adeniyi, the authoritative and well-informed Thursday columnist of Thisday and the chairman of its editorial board, published last week, to see that his imagination is precise only that – imagination, and a wild one at that.

Before Segun, Government, an in-depth investigative weekly publication in the stable of Leadership newspapers which looks like a cross between a Sunday newspaper and a newsmagazine, had published a three-page list of all the actors in the oil business, including the multinationals, the local companies, the service companies and the drillers, etc, in its edition of February 4. Even the most casual examination of the lists in the two newspapers will give the lie to our senator’s claim of the ownership structure of the country’s oil wells.

The motive for that lie is obvious, or should be, to any reasonable observer of our politics; divert the public’s attention from the bigger culprits for the short, nasty and brutish lives of the hapless people of the oil producing Niger Delta. And the bigger culprits are no other than the leaders of the region themselves, including, of course, our distinguished senator and the ex war-lords of the region like Ateke Tom, who have been living it off in Abuja and other big cities of the country since the declaration of amnesty for the region’s militants several years ago.

Few Nigerians have captured the level of culpability of the region’s elite for its woes than, first, Chief Edwin Clark, the self-declared leader of the region, and second, Chief James Ibori, the jailed ex-governor of Delta State.

More than five years ago, Chief Clark told The Nation (August 11, 2007) that the governors of the region were the most corrupt in the country. “Nigerians,” he said, “are worried why the recent activities of EFFC resulting in the arrest and trial of certain governors in the country have not affected the former governors of the Niger Delta who were known all over the country and the world as the most corrupt and investigated governors by the EFFC.”

Long before Chief Clark, the jailed Chief Ibori provided probably the biggest insight into the cause of the Niger Delta’s predicament of poverty in oil riches. Lamenting the self-exile in far-awayAustralia of Dr. Eric Opia as the fugitive boss of OMPADEC, the precursor of NDDC, the governor told the since rested Post Express (July 11, 2001) “Our son Opia is on the run today. Those that stole OMPADEC money are still walking the streets. Those that ate OMPADEC money are not from the Niger Delta. If Opia took money actually and embezzled it, yes he is our son. The money is still within the region.”

Clearly, it is this inexplicable attitude among the likes of Chief Ibori that only those from the Niger Delta should be free to steal the region blind, and not any perceived control of the region’s oil wealth by outsiders, which is the principal source of the region’s predicament.

Those who all too readily jumped at Senator Enang’s blatant mendacity to blame outsiders for the problems of the Niger Delta should be honest enough to accept that scapegoating others is no solution to those problems.

Just finished reading this article and am still left curiously confused as to the point being made in this 1445 words article towards refuting the Senator’s claim. Mr. Haruna, you seem to take yourself as some good investigative journalist. lets hear you put up something as to who are the real faces behind boko haram. You could well give your career a big lift in that line than desolating yourself in covering the obvious which is like trying to cover a pregnacy with your bare hands.
I found it irksome that someone of your supposed value (wanting though) as a juno would publish peoples phone numbers on national daily just because they disagree with your view of things. Am wondering what “The Nation” editor was ridding on when he gave this a pass.

RealityCheck

Well said Mohammed, but tell me. What stops another Senator stepping out tomorrow and spewing forth another bunch of half-truths?
The last time I checked, we now have the PIB passed into law.
If you, a well known columnist, was stone-walled in your attempt to obtain the information from the official source, to put a lie to what the senator said, why will the ordinary Sumonu not be swayed to believe crap from other sources?

Sunday

Nigerian politicians are known of using diversionary tactics to misrule the country. I wonder if a senator do not have good information about an issue, how will he be able make good laws. Nigeria is being ruled by sentiments clouded with vested interests fired by demonic greed. It is a common sense that with such sentimental and provocative information in the ‘divisible’ Nigeria will only add to the ember of collapse.

One thing I understand in the so called lie of the senator is that the federal govt who supervised the allocations of the oil well had not come out to say the statistics is a lie. Reading through ur piece Mr Haruna left me with no option to ask what journalism is turning to in Nigeria. Why the rush in passing the bill for the last reading thereafter. Pls say something rose, you think those of us from the south are so daft and unkwowledgible like your folks from the north ,that knew nothing other than blowing themselves and innocents souls up

Mallam Haruna, I think that the ‘itch’ to publish this article was more compelling to you than getting the facts from the agencies you mentioned. In defence of your ilk, you left behind your ever consistent facts with figures writing approach and instead choose to belabour the issue. Wouldn’t it have been better if you tore apart the companies Enang had listed with your journalistic scissors to reveal identities that you think are a fanthom? Let us know if these companies exist or not. Please name names and not trade blames. Sincerely, I have never read an article of yours that is so belaboured and lacking in depth.

Brown

The fact that Mohammed experienced a futile attempt to secure alternative facts from the NNPC and the DPR is ample evidence that such alternative facts do not exist. Any delayed provision may therefore be cooked. Mohammed merely begged the question in a rather futile attempt to defend the indefendable, prove Enang wrong, and satisfy the ego of his cleavage.